Australia 2014: Part 1

4 Apr 20143 Feb 2019 / Dav / Leave a comment

It took me about an hour to get through the international customs line. I was approached twice by a drug-sniffing dog and had to fight the urge to pet the thing. I had to nothing to declare, but several people asked in that hour. Truth: I wasn’t bringing any firearms, drugs, fruits or vegetables into Australia. Each time I answered these questions, I thought about the Hostess fruit pies in my checked luggage. I don’t think the fruit in those little pies count as actual fruit because of all the sugar that they’ve added- I’m going by nutritional value here.

When I finally rounded the corner, Arron was sitting in the lobby, and he immediately snapped my picture. Pretty sure I looked like I’d just been on a plane for 14 hours. It was so good to see him and give him a hug. As we approached his car in the parking garage, I automatically crossed over to the left side. He stopped to ask me if I was planning on driving. I told him no and then realized what I had done. We both got a chuckle. Yes, I know that they drive on the left side of the street here, but in my defense- I had just flown a very long flight with minimal sleep and at this point, I was mostly operating in zombie-mode.

We drove to his house in Ferny Grove, which isn’t very far from downtown Brisbane. On the way, we stopped by the side of the road so that I could get a picture of the city. I’ve decided that Ferny Grove reminds me of a cross between rural Maryland and San Diego. It was a perfect day!

We got to the house and I met Brendan. Brendan has been my friend for a few years now, but he didn’t really know this because we actually hadn’t met yet… or talked… or interacted in any way, shape or form. Arron brought him to the states a few years ago, and I saw a few pictures that our friend Monica posted on Facebook. It’s true that I assume everybody is my friend until they prove to me that they don’t want to be. This makes for some amusing stories, for sure.

Arron and Brendan both had to go to work for awhile, and knew that I wanted to rest. They gave me directions to the local lightrail station and Arron and I planned to meet for lunch downtown. I tried to get a nap, but just couldn’t nod off. This was my first day in Australia and I really wanted to look around. I had envisioned riding a kangaroo, wrestling a wild dingo and making out with a koala and none of these things were going to happen if I was at the house taking a nap.

I hit the internet for few minutes, then I headed to the lightrail. On the train, I sat near the only other person in the car. I told her I was heading into the city, and asked her if I was on the right train. She told me I was, and asked me where I was from. We talked and talked and talked. She told me her name is Mariea (not ‘Maria’, but pronounced the same). She has lived in the Brisbane area for more than 40 years and one of her granddaughters has recently been hired as a flight attendant for Emirates. She was incredibly sweet!

For lunch, Arron took me to a little Italian restaurant and taught me an important lesson- even fast food is quite different than fast food in the states, in that it’s not really fast at all. We stood in line for almost a half an hour, just waiting for our turn to order. When it was finally our turn, the meal was prepared right in front of us like a less-flashy Benihana style. The cook prepared the entire meal from scratch, other than having to kill the chicken or make the pasta by hand. It still took us about fifteen more minutes to get our plates. Fresh-made pesto is one of my new favorites!

After lunch, we walked off our meals by going to three different museums. The first was a Douglas MacArthur museum. The timeline was post WWI, through WWII and in MacArthur’s office they still had his original desk and some of his original furniture.

Next was the museum of Brisbane, which was (or maybe is) the city hall. This is a beautiful building that had a clock tower and was, from 1930 to 1964, the tallest building in Brisbane. We rode up in a very old elevator, that happens to be the only manually operated cage lift that is still working in all of Australia! The tour of the clock tower was free, and provided some remarkable views of the city! I learned that the tower was build in the 1920s, and the bells are still operated by the same electric motors that were installed when it was first erected.

We crossed the Brisbane river and headed over to the place of Brendan’s work. It is my understanding that Brendan is one of the guys who’s in charge of a huge drama festival for children that will be happening this summer. So far, I don’t quite understand what it is, but Brendan does and that’s what’s important. I had to snap a picture of the banner that was hanging on the performing arts center since Brendan is now “my people” and I’m always hoping for the best for my people.

We decided to go to one more museum while we were waiting for Brendan to be finished with work. This museum had three exhibits. The first was a bunch of animals that were all standing in white sand that surrounded some water. It was pretty cool. The second exhibit was a huge tree on its side. We figure they would have had to take out one of the nearby windows in order to get this massive tree into the room. It was huge and it’s branches touched both opposing walls.

The third exhibit was my favorite. It was basically a bunch of wolves (or maybe they were coyotes?) that were jumping, flying and smashing into a clear wall. Art to me is either really, really stupid, or really, really cool. I’ll admit that I don’t understand a lot of art, but this was cool! The time it most likely took the artist to pose and suspend all these wolves in the air must have been months, at least.

Arron and I headed back over to the performing arts center and took a seat in an outdoor bistro and had a good chat. The best way I can describe this conversation is that we talked a lot about being happy. That’s really what I want in this life is to be truly happy. I’ve never had a tough time making the best of whatever my situation or circumstance has been, but I am a happy and positive person, for the most part. It was a good heart-to-heart. Arron has become a great friend!

When Brendan finally finished up, we headed back to the house and ordered some Thai food for dinner. It was only about 19:00 and I felt that I really needed to get some sleep.

Australia 2014: PreTrip 4

3 Apr 20143 Feb 2019 / Dav / Leave a comment

An interesting thing happened at L.A.X., about an hour before I boarded the plane. I was sitting on the floor, near the only electrical outlet by my gate, charging my devices when this older man who looked like he was from India, turban and all, glanced down at my hand and asked me if he could read my palm. I told him I didn’t mind- I figure that he wasn’t going to try anything weird since there were a lot of other people around. He took my palm and told me that he’d been professionally reading palms for the past 50+ years and that today was his 78th birthday.

Here’s what he told me he read in my palm:

My spirit has been on this earth for about 3,800 years, reincarnated over and over.
There’s a good possibility that I will start to lose my memory at around 70 years old, but I’ll continue to live on to be very old.
I will never be rich, but will always be slightly comfortable and able to make ends meet.
I will have two more great loves in my life. One will stay with me, and the other will part ways with me.
I need to take up some sort of martial art to become more focused and become a better singer.
In my last life, I was an Italian woman who happened to be a lesbian.
About 300 years ago, I was in the body of a black man who lived in western Africa.

Do I believe everything this man told me? Absolutely not! Was it cool to have my first palm reading? Absolutely! One thing that did stick out to me was the fact that when I got my genetic testing done with 23andMe.com a few months ago, there was a very small portion of my DNA that came from western Africa. This man then went on to bash all forms of Christianity, that Jesus was only on earth to perform small miracles and wasn’t really the son of God. He told me that the only reason that my pastor taught me about heaven and hell was to control me. This man claimed to be psychic and there are quite a few things he got wrong about me. Still, it was cool to have my palm read. I just nodded my head, pretending to agree with him, and I smiled a lot. Harmless airport fun!

As I boarded the plane, I handed the chocolates to the lead flight attendant and told her she had to share them with her coworkers. I then told her that I was a flight attendant for Southwest Airlines and let her know that I’d be sitting in seat 61-A. She was very appreciative and several times during the flight, the other crew members came back to thank me. They were extremely kind and this move scored me a nice pair of noise-canceling headphones.

You want to know what makes a 13 hour and 55 minute flight seem even longer? This is when the guy who is two seats over from you decides to take his shoes off. He had no socks on and by the smell of things, he’d had to walk a lot that day in the California heat. It was not pleasant. Other than that, the flight was great! I tried to get some sleep on the way and think I may have managed to get about 2 hours in. For me, this is an amazing accomplishment.

Something very significant and awe-inspiring just happened. There’s a place over the Pacific where two invisible lines cross each other. This is where the equator crosses the international date line. Prior to a few minutes ago, I had never crossed either of these lines. I just crossed both of these lines… at the same time. In my opinion, this is very, very cool and I think it was worth powering up the laptop to record this event. Does this make me more of a man or a better person? I think so. Also, this is one step closer to considering myself a world traveler. Very cool!

Australia 2014: PreTrip 3

1 Apr 201431 Jan 2019 / Dav / Leave a comment

I can’t sleep. My body woke up somewhere around 04:30 even though I was up until almost midnight getting things together- there is no sleep left in me. Megan isn’t going to come to pick me up for another six hours but I’m done sleeping. Maybe this is a good thing since my flight doesn’t leave Los Angeles until 23:45 tonight. Maybe that means I’ll actually sleep on the plane. I should drug myself.

Megan showed up right at 09:30 and I grabbed my two bags (one to check and one to carry-on) and threw them in the trunk of her car. We had to make a stop at Walmart so I could grab a few things. Arron commanded me to bring Hostess pies and butterscotch pudding for him. What I really mean is that he asked me if I’d bring some for him- I knew that if I did, they would get smashed in my checked bag, and he’d need to eat his treats with a fork or a spoon. I guess these are some things that they just don’t have in Australia. I ran into Walmart and found a little plastic box to put them in. I hope this keeps the treats uncrushed until I see Arron in about twenty-two hours.

Since I still had about 10 hours until I could check in for my flight, I walked down to get some lunch at In-N-Out Burger, near LAX.

After ordering my #1, animal style, a gal who was also waiting for her order started chatting with me. Her name is Roxie and she just so happens to be one of my coworkers, based in Baltimore. After being an operations agent in Raleigh for I-don’t-remember-how-many years (close to thirty years, if I recall) she finally decided a couple years ago that she was going to transfer to inflight and start to see the country. We had a great chat!

We talked about our experiences in flight attendant training and the fact that her 30-year-old son is going through the exact same training in Dallas at this very moment. We remembered all the stress and head games that we had to live through to earn our wings. Those memories came flooding back! I think I had tried to block most of them out. It was quite common in training for you to get close to someone, thinking they’d become a life-long friend and coworker, only to find out the next day that they’d been sent home for failing a test or for one of a million other reasons. I remember that our training class started with 136, and I think only 84 made it to graduation. Roxie told me that from one test alone (passing of the P.A.s) they lost about 11. Mind games. Stress. Tears. Sleepless nights, pacing the hotel hallways studying because you really, really wanted to be a flight attendant.

I remembered there was a boy named Edwin in my training class. The day before our graduation, Edwin went out to celebrate his twenty-first birthday. The next morning, we all showed up to the shuttle and were very excited because this was our big day. We were getting our class picture taken and going over some last-minute career training and then we were going to “get pinned” (receive our wings) in a ceremony later in the afternoon. Edwin never showed up that day because he partied too hard and slept through his alarm or wakeup call. Instead of allowing him to join us later in the day (he had already passed all of his exams), they put him on a flight home. They told us from our very first day in training that we always had to be on-time to class, because they had to trust us to show up to the plane when we were supposed to be there. Edwin would have made a great flight attendant. I wonder what he’s doing now.

After a quick visit to the CVS so that I could pick up some generic Zzzquil and some generic Gas-x, just in case, we walked back together until it came time for me to turn right, heading to the terminal and Roxie turned left, heading back to her layover hotel. She’s a very cool gal and we exchanged our info so that we will hopefully keep in touch.

I grabbed my bags and lugged them all the way to the L.A.X. international terminal. Up to this point, I’ve only experienced terminal 1 because this is the only terminal that we fly out of for work. The international terminal or terminal 4 is a long hike, especially carrying a bag the size of the one I packed for this trip. Next time I’ll fork out the $5 to rent one of those easy cart thingies. I felt like I was going to pass out, lugging it the whole way.

<18:39>

I stepped up to the Qantas ticket counter, wondering if it was too early for me to check in for a plane that wasn’t supposed to leave for hours. The agent told me that it was indeed possible and that many other passengers had already checked in. She took my passport and told me that she wouldn’t even need my confirmation number. She scanned it through the groove on her keyboard, checked the screen and asked me if I had any bags to check to Charlotte this evening. “Okay, first of all, I didn’t even know that Qantas flew to Charlotte. Secondly,” I told her, “I am actually going the opposite direction and flying to Brisbane tonight.” She scratched her head and I pulled my confirmation number out of my bag. She scanned my passport again and this time it had me going to Brisbane. Much better! Although Charlotte, North Carolina is lovely!

Once I was through the security line (which was basically nonexistent for me since I happened to be in a flight attendant uniform- awesome benefit!) and a pitstop to the men’s room, I set out to find some chocolate. It is a well-known fact that you should always bring chocolate for the flight crew. Now that you know this, never fly without bringing some! Please don’t get the cheap, waxy kind of chocolate either. I was glad to find a See’s Candies shop in the terminal and grabbed a couple boxes of truffles. I hope the crew is grateful for the gesture.

Australia 2014: PreTrip 2

31 Mar 201431 Jan 2019 / Dav / Leave a comment

I called up my cousin Megan to find out what her schedule is like this week. I don’t want to park my truck in a public parking lot for an entire month so I was hoping to park at her house in Kaysville and get a ride to the airport. She told me that she probably didn’t have the room to park my big truck, but said that she was off of work for spring break and she’d come out to the house to pick me up. This is so helpful! I was going to have to get an expensive taxi. Megan will be my driving service.

Australia 2014: PreTrip

30 Mar 201431 Jan 2019 / Dav / 2 Comments

I just got the most amusing email from Virgin Australia since I’ve booked my flights around Australia on them. I think they are desperate to fill those first class or business class seats because they’re open to the highest bidder! I checked the site out and it looks like the starting bid is AU$150, and even with that bid, the site told me that there was a very low probability that my bid would be chosen. I think I’m going to stick with my original plan of bringing chocolate and flirting with the flight attendants. We’ll see how far that gets me to the front of the plane.

11 Sep 201220 Feb 2017 / Dav / Leave a comment

Washington Camping Adventure: Day 10

Here are the pictures from day 10. I will come back and post the story as soon as I find it in my notes.

10 Sep 201220 Feb 2017 / Dav / Leave a comment

Washington Camping Adventure: Day 9

Here are the pictures from day 9. I will come back and post the story as soon as I find it in my notes.

9 Sep 201220 Feb 2017 / Dav / Leave a comment

Washington Camping Adventure: Day 8

Here are the pictures (and video) from day 8. I will come back and post the story as soon as I find it in my notes.

8 Sep 201220 Feb 2017 / Dav / Leave a comment

Washington Camping Adventure: Day 7

Here are the pictures from day 7. I will come back and post the story as soon as I find it in my notes.

7 Sep 201220 Feb 2017 / Dav / Leave a comment

Washington Camping Adventure: Day 6

I woke up early this morning and after walking to use the “facilities”, I came back to camp and guess who was waiting for me? L.B.! I chased him around the table a couple of times and he shot off of a tree. I’m not sure what he’s after because we cleaned all the food up before we went to bed last night. Perhaps he was just checking to make sure. I want to kill him and have him stuffed and mounted on my wall at home.

We declared today “shower day”. Swimming in the lake does a pretty good job of keeping the stink down, but we really felt the need to start fresh. The nearby Lake Quinault Lodge provides a shower for a small fee. This gives us a key card that will last for one day. It was so nice to feel the hot water! I no longer smell like a campfire! I’m sure I will by tomorrow, but I still feel great at the moment.

We had to spend some time at the lodge to use their Wi-Fi signal. Megan is having a situation with her dog, Hobbit. Her dad is taking care of him, but he needs to be out of town soon. She finally found a place for Hobbit and had to make all kinds of arrangements. We were getting hungry for lunch and so we ate at the lodge restaurant. I had my first Monte Christo sandwich (not sure if that’s how it’s spelled though). What a funky combination of flavors! Megan had a salad.

We were getting hungry for lunch and so we ate at the lodge restaurant. I had my first Monte Christo sandwich (not sure if that’s how it’s spelled). What a funky combination of flavors! Megan had a salad.

It was laundry day! About a mile down the road we found a laundromat and spent about an hour washing and drying our clothes. While we waited for our clothes, we sat in some grass on the edge of the lake, chatted and listen to some music.

It was time to check out Forks! This happens to be one of the items on my bucket list! Now before you judge me: I wanted to see forks since I serve a mission here. This is because one of the missionaries who served here told me that to live in Forks, you have to have either a lazy eye or finger missing. This was back in 1994 and if you do the math, that was way before the Twilight Saga came out. But on the subject of Twilight, GO TEAM EDWARD!

We got to the town, we could see that EVERYBODY was trying to capitalize off of the Twilight frenzy. Megan even pointed out a sign that read “Twilight Firewood”. It made us both laugh!

Next we went to visit the first beach that La Push (Remember the scene where the friends all went surfing and Jacob hinted to Bella about the vampires?). Such a beautiful beach!

We found some clam chowder at a restaurant called The River’s Edge where we both had the clam chowder. I ordered a delicious seafood Alfredo, and Megan not only fell off the HCG wagon, but she seems to have lit the damn thing on fire!

On our ride back to camp, Megan came up with a brilliant plan! It was about an hour before sunset and so she suggested that we go find a beach nearby and watch the sunset. I took way too many pictures, but I feel like they turned out really great! Here are some of my favorites.